


Wings in a Cage

by vogue91



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Azkaban, F/M, Introspection, Madness, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 22:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13774203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: During the endless nights at times she found herself talking to him. Who noticed thought of it as another sign of an incipient madness, but she didn’t care much for it.She established these imaginary dialogues with him, and it was enough for her to get through anything.





	Wings in a Cage

Inhuman screams. Shouts. Cries. Madness.

This is what she was forced to hear, and still her ears hadn’t grown accustomed to that Babylon of shrill and feeble sounds.

 _If you can’t beat them join them s_ he told herself. And that’s what Bellatrix had decided to do, after less than a month in that damned prison.

She had screamed, and she had finally felt free.

She wasn’t for sure free from those links of iron keeping her chained to the wall, as if she was a dog, but free from the weight of her own thoughts, free from memories too painful for her mind to face them.

Madness had come to her less than a year into Azkaban. She didn’t really know what to owe it to. Dementors had some effect on her, but her thoughts were far from being happy or serene to begin with, so they had very little to take away from her. They were mostly indifferent, aware of her presence in that dark cell just for those screams dominating over other prisoners’.

Bellatrix, unlike all of them, had a purpose to keep her alive as she once was. Barty, Rabastan and Rodolphus himself were enduring the sentence as if it was the right price for their loyalty to the Dark Lord, or anyway something that they couldn’t fight.

She spent her days looking at the Mark she bore, as if it was the Portkey to a future salvation.

Her irises mirrored it, black on black, and they turned themselves into that very same snake thinking about her Lord.

During the endless nights at times she found herself talking to him. Who noticed thought of it as another sign of an incipient madness, but she didn’t care much for it.

She established these imaginary dialogues with him, and it was enough for her to get through anything.

The hard and cold stone under her became all of a sudden soft and warm, the screams turned into faded whispers and the darkness left its place to the purest lights.

She couldn’t say whether they were dreams or hallucinations, she had lost since a long time the faculty to understand if she was asleep. She just knew that in those moments he was there with her, and that his image gave her a new strength, as if she still was the best among all the Death Eaters, and not a jailbird momentarily fallen in destruction.

 _“You look tired, Bella.”_ was the sentence he used to say to her during his night raids. And she laughed, as the good madwoman she was, she laughed for his disdainful and anguished voice.

 _“I’m not tired, my Lord. I’m still strong enough.”_ she replied, in a not requested justification designed to convince herself to still be alive.

And it always worked to perfection.

 _“I can see it Bella, I can see it. The others... they can’t bear all this. But you’re better, you’ve always known that. You can fight the boredom and the agony, you can survive waiting for my return.”_ his voice, hissing and heavy, made her jump. It was what made her feel sure of the fact that he was actually there, that it was no common hologram spawned from her mind.

Imagination wasn’t trained enough to reproduce _that_ sound, born to bestow shivers, but that she found attractive in an almost harmful way.

At that point, her irises used to almost burst into flames, hit by the vision of the man for whom she felt such an utter respect getting closer, with slow steps, like the free fall of grain of sands inside an hourglass.

She held her breath, aware that she didn’t really need it to survive, until she felt a frozen breeze on her face, right on the spot where she imagined he was touching her with his long, tapered fingers.

 _“I know what you can stand. I see you, fallen on this earth, rebel and feral. I see how these stone walls chain you, how they cage your wings.”_ he got closer, his mouth close to her ear, softening his voice, making it a little more than a whisper. _“I’ll have you flying once again, Bella. You’re the only one still believing in me, and you’ll be rewarded for your faith.”_

Then he left, leaving her with the bitter promise of a tomorrow, and her heart beating violently in her chest.

She had gotten used too easily to those regular visits, less to the idea that her Lord might’ve not come back anymore.

They had told her he was dead, she knew Potter had survived.

And yet somehow she knew it couldn’t be true, that he would’ve never abandoned her to her destiny.

This was the reason why she kept relentlessly to figure him in front of her each night, in the mad terror that she could forget his face and, with it, the desires persecuting her since the moment she first met him.

Madness was what kept her powerful and dangerous. She didn’t listen to anybody, she just followed the thread of her thoughts, anywhere they decided to take her, and she went on with her existence pretending she could cross those freezing walls anytime she wanted.

 

~

 

That night seemed to flow slower than usual. It was raining, and Bellatrix amused herself watching the single drops of rains penetrating in her narrow cell from a crack in the stone roof. The Dark Lord had already visited her mind, and he had left leaving traces of invisible hands.

She wasn’t going to sleep. Tiredness and sleep were for the weak, and that night she wouldn’t have given in to her nature of simple human.

She crawled on the floor, scratching her hands and knees, feeling like one of those snakes her Lord valued so much. The blood started flowing from wounds that weren’t going to heal. Not until she was in Azkaban, at least. She tore a piece of the filthy sheet thrown in a corner, wrapping it around her hand to stop the blood. Soon there was nothing left of the worn white weave of the fabric, which had become purely red.

She got closer to the puddle of water in the middle of the cell, and she mirrored in it, hoping  to find herself on that dirty surface.

The water was turbid, and she could see nothing but her blurry features and her eyes, which seemed to penetrate its ridiculous depth.

Her irises pieces of liquid onyx, black, crystalized in that water, witness to a tiredness that she wasn’t going to admit she felt.

It was all on that improvised mirror, her hope, her madness and her torment.

She laughed, out of the blue. Her wings were caged, but she was no rebel angel. She was a raven, a vulture, permeated of that very same darkness she could feel inside of her.

“He’ll be back. He’ll be back, and I’ll be free to fly again, looking for carcasses, for tortures. Looking for all that has been stolen from me.” she whispered, excited, and she couldn’t tear her eyes from that blurry reflection.

It wasn’t belief. She _knew._

He was going to rise again, and she would’ve been reborn together with him.

This was the future to be read in that putrid puddle. A future of death and destruction, of war, of hunger, of Apocalypse.

A future where she read her own Hell on Earth.

Hell existed only for those who were scared of it.

Bellatrix didn’t fear a thing, not anymore.

Hell would’ve turned into her Garden of Eden. Her and Voldemort, revived Adam and Eve, would’ve drowned the Magical World into utter sin, before crushing it once and for all.

She screamed, going back to her world of madness. She screamed louder than the others, she screamed in the name of a victory that was going to come. She opened her eyes wide, staining them with the feeble light coming from the bars.

She was mad, and mad people were free to wait for what they desired as if it was destined to happen.

She, that night, was the maddest of them all.


End file.
